The transportation of packaged fruits and vegetables utilizes reusable containers or boxes with upwardly open mouths, side walls and a bottom, wherein the mouth can be defined by a frame forming grips for enabling the user to lift and transport the container. The container, upon emptying, can be returned to the source of the product so that it is recirculated. It is advantageous for the containers to be capable of nesting to thereby reduce the volume of the containers in the return travel, thereby minimizing the cost of returning them.
For this purpose, various container structures have been used. For example, rectangular transport containers have been provided with side walls which taper downwardly thereby enabling one container to nest in the other. However, since stacking of the containers when they contain goods to be transported is a necessity and nesting will cause the weight of upper containers to be applied to goods in lower containers, metal stirrups or bails have been provided on these tapered-wall containers to support the frames of each upper container upon the frame of a lower container and thereby prevent the nesting. These metal stirrups were swingable from the plane of the mouth of the respective container downwardly into vertical orientations in which they could support the respective container on a lower container.
This construction was difficult to handle and relatively costly because of the need for separate fabrication and assembly of the wire stirrups.
The art is also aware of containers in which the container walls themselves can be swung from folded positions into erect positions and vice versa. In the folded or collapsed position of the walls, the containers have a minimal volume and are thus capable of being transported at low cost. When the walls are unfolded, however, to erect the container, one container can be supported on the rim or frame of the next in stacking of the containers. These systems have the drawback that erection of the container is time-consuming and generally requires a number of manipulative steps which may be difficult to carry out.
DE 41 26 749 A1 describes a plastic container having two opposite side walls rigid with a frame and a bottom while two other side walls can be folded inwardly. When these side walls have been folded in, the containers can be nested in one another for transport. When the side walls are folded out, however, they provide force-transmitting walls which enable one container to be stacked upon another. These containers also have been found to be expensive to fabricate and time-consuming and complex to set up and fold up.